


bring out yer dead

by percybysshes (kitmarlowed)



Category: Johannes Cabal - Jonathan L. Howard
Genre: A Hoard of Zombies, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 17:21:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5464703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitmarlowed/pseuds/percybysshes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Famous Cabal Bros find themselves in a remote Inn surrounded by the undead. Or; a typical evening</p>
            </blockquote>





	bring out yer dead

**Author's Note:**

  * For [1shinymess (magpie4shinies)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magpie4shinies/gifts).



> Happy YULE!

The famous[[1](%E2%80%9C#note1%E2%80%9D)] Cabal Brothers lurched their way into town with all the ceremony possible of a horse-drawn cart with its wheels mired in mud, which is to say: not very much ceremony at all. The younger of the two, if one works on date of birth as opposed to days living on this earth, paid the driver. The elder[[2](%E2%80%9C#note2%E2%80%9D)] of the two lifted the brim of his top hat and frowned.

"Remind me, Johannes, who it was asked you here on this precise night for an Important Meeting?" said Horst Cabal, managing to enunciate capital letters while still sounding lazily disinterested. He got a bag thrown at him for his trouble as Johannes answered, "An acquaintance in the rare book finding business. Antiquities. That sort of thing. Valuable person to have on one's side."

Horst shifted the bag and leant his head out of the carriage. "Far be it from you to just accept an invitation without good reason. What does this person want?"

Johannes Cabal yanked open the door and gave his brother a level stare. "I did not ask, Horst, his letter seemed imperative enough. Now will you get out of this cart before the man begins charging us rent!"

Doing so, Horst moved fast, blurring before Johannes' vision for a second and coming back into focus on the porch of the inn. "Hurry up then, Johannes, you'll catch your death."

Grumbling, Johannes carried his own bag to the door and, gingerly, raised his fist to knock. He looked, thought Horst, to all the world like a man whose purpose in walking into this remote inn was murder. But then, Horst reasoned, it was rare that his brother didn't look exceptionally murderous, and they were both dripping wet. On another man the water might have softened him, but Johannes looked as sharp and dangerous as ever, even blinking water out of his eyes.

"What're ye standin' around out here fir, ye look like a pair o' drowned rats." 

Johannes jumped and Horst, who had heard the ancient doorknob creak ominously if quietly before the door opened, stifled a laugh and smiled. "I'm afraid we're quite lost," Horst lied, working on the knowledge that it's always better to at least appear on the back foot when meeting new people. "Is this Durisdeer? My brother is supposed to be meeting someone but we could hardly see out of the carriage for the rain."

The ragged innkeeper made a sound awfully akin to a coo and pulled Horst inside, placing him next to her in the hallway before doing the same to grab Johannes. "Am Gill," she said. Johannes, albeit with a face like thunder, refrained from comment. 

Once inside, the inn seemed much more hospitable than it had from the outside. Seated at various tables and sofas that may once have been plush but now were just 'comfy' were not at all the local riff raff Horst had expected for a public house so far off the beaten track. The woman at the table closest to the fire even had a dress with bustles, along with rather expensive looking jewellery. It didn't quite seem right. Beside him Johannes shifted his posture, surveying the crowd over the tops of his glasses with the slow heartbeat of someone who is trying very hard to not be ill at ease. It was wasted on Horst, of course, who could smell the fear, but he appreciated his brother's self control all the same.

Johannes cleared his throat. "How much for one night's bed and board?" 

"A only have one room for ye boys, so am afraid ye'll have tae share," said the innkeeper, or the innkeeper's wife but Horst didn't want to presume - it's a modern world after all. "We're dain dinner in around an hour. Room and dinner'll be five. Up front." She smiled a smile full of yellowing teeth and the wary good will of the kind but experienced and offered Horst the key.

"Well, Gill," Horst said, elbowing Johannes in the direction of the stairs, "I think we'll go and deposit our bags and then have a beer."

*

Johannes sighed. "He wasn't there."

"I'd gathered that Johannes," Horst told him, pushing upward and onto a dimly lit landing. "What are you thinking? Trap? They hardly look dangerous."

"Mmm," Johannes said. "That's the worrisome part. They all look out of place, you must have noticed."

"Of course I did," Horst says, and then: "Bustles."

Johannes gave him a look, the look of a man considering asking after another man's sanity and then deciding against it. "Indeed."

Horst shouldered open the door to their room. It was pitch black and Johannes stayed in the hall as Horst lit the lamps, the perks of vampirism making him, if not envious, at least a little miffed at the present time. Of the brothers Johannes was probably not the one meant for life, but that's the way the cookie crumbled and Horst did take to immortality like he does to most glamourous things. Johannes reasoned from the doorway that a potentially dangerous evening in the middle of nowhere wasn't the time to grow existential about leaving your brother to die. He let the thoughts go and crossed into the room.

"It's not too bad," Horst said, brushing the dust from his hands and hair. 

Johannes hummed again. "Which in itself is another worry. Where are the getting the money to keep this place looking decent?"

Horst rolled his eyes. "Not everything has to be nefarious, Johannes." He said. "They could just be good, honest, God fearing folk who keep a good inn."

"It's not likely. Not in this economy. Not with what appeared to be no regulars whatsoever downstairs at the bar."

"Maybe Bustles lives near by," Horst suggested. "Maybe all the locals are at a football match. We don't know-"

Johannes crossed to the window. "It's blowing a gale and raining enough to drown any man who steps foot outside. If you must speak at least make your interjections sensible."

Horst shrugged and then lurched forwards, making Johannes jump out of shock and not at all fear for his life[[3](%E2%80%9C#note3%E2%80%9D)], and dived under the bed. "Johannes, someone has left an arsenal under our bed."

"It's not our bed, it's my bed," Johannes told him calmly, or at least letting his heart rate settle. "And what?"

Emerging with arms laden with arms, Horst smiled at Johannes. The smile had an awful lot of teeth in it and the teeth were awfully sharp. He put the guns down on the bed gently and stepped back. "Why would anyone, let alone someone in an Inn in the middle of nowhere, need that many guns?" Horst said.

Johannes looked at the assortment, shotguns and pistols and something that looked dangerously similar to a musket, and thought. He thought about all he'd seen so far. "We need to speak to the people downstairs," he decided.

"Friendly talking to," Horst asked cheerily, "or storm in and demand to know what the hell is going on?"

"The former, at first." Johannes smiled his own terrifying smile.

Horst made a face. "Please stop that," he said. "You look terrifying."

Johannes mused that he'd always thought that was a better point to smiling.

*

The fire crackled in the wall and before it the old pub dog raised its head. It sniffed the air once, twice, and then, with a widening of its eyes it slinked away. Once it had reached the kitchen, the dog, who had a very good nose for trouble, bolted as fast as it could. 

Something out in the rain paused in its slow lurching amble to the inn and turned, watching the dog run as fast as its old legs could carry it. The something turned to another something.

"Hrrrg," it said.

"Harrg," said the other something, dismissively. 

The two somethings turned back and recommenced their shuffle.

*

The fire crackled in the grate for Johannes and Horst too, as the wound their way through the cigar smoke and beery fog to the bar. Horst leant against the dark wood of it, regretting it instantly as his pristine sleeve began to soak up enough spilt ale to fill a pint glass. He flicked his fingers out and ordered two ales. The barman, an old sort of chap with sharp grey eyes and a fuzz of facial hair that probably just hid more of the same wizened face seen in pubs all over the kingdom, complied quickly.

Drinks in hand, the brothers surveyed the room. 

"I'll take-" Horst began only to be shushed by Johannes shoving him lightly and saying: "Bustles, I know. You're very preoccupied with her."

Horst grinned. "Her dress is ghastly," he opined, gleeful. "And years out of fashion. Like she's clinging onto some faded grandeur and I absolutely have to know everything about her."

Johannes brought his fingers up to the bridge of his nose. He could feel a headache beginning to bloom behind his eyes. Then again, it was a day ending in a Y and Horst was talking a lot. He wafted smoke away from his eyes and sighed. "Fine. But just ascertain-"

In another universe, Johannes might have finished that sentence. In another universe it might not have happened. But they were in this universe, and, unfortunately, it did happen.

From the table Bustles let out an ear drum assaulting screech as a skeletal hand smashed through the window and grabbed her by the hair. 

Johannes stilled, if stilling is even possible when one is already moving only to breathe, and Horst stiffened. 

"Shall I get the guns?" he asked.

"If you'd be so kind," Johannes said, not looking away from the door as he shed his jacket and began to roll up his sleeves. "The musket first."

Horst nodded, and blurred.

*

The somethings rallied to the light. The light was a candle, lit in a specific window of the inn, and they marched towards it. Or, they would have marched had some of them not had to stop every five minutes or so to reattach a limb or pop an eyeball back into its socket. 

They were a motley crew to be sure, but they 'Arghed' and "Grred" with purpose, and they were very good at breaking through things. Things like windows and doors just got in the way, you see, and nothing could be allowed to stand between them and their food.

"Braaaaaaaaaaaains," yowled one of the somethings and a cluster of them looked its way. 

"Grr," said another, but it sort of sounded like 'showoff'.

The somethings continued their shuffle-cum-march whilst inside the inn the screams of Mrs C Gratitude continued to climb in volume.

*

"Will somebody shut her up," Johannes griped, cocking the gun Horst had blurred back to him and firing at the elbow of the thing currently trying its level best to tear Bustles' scalp off.

Horst eyed the door. Three or four of the somethings were bashing through, sending splinters of wood and bone and even some slivers of flesh into the room. "Now now, Johannes," he said, picking his way through the tables with the kind of dissonant serenity that really seems to freak people out. "Put yourself in her place, I'm sure you'd be screaming the place down too." 

He reached the door just as the first thing broke fully through. Its left arm was almost entirely dislocated, hanging on by a tendon or two, but it reached with an arm just fleshy enough to be gruesome. Horst rolled his eyes. "Wrong tree," he muttered, taking the thing's hand and yanking it towards him. He looked the thing in the solitary blue-flamed eye and raised his hand-

A gunshot sounded. Horst whipped his head around to see his brother busy kicking some more fiends away from himself. There was a cough from behind him. 

"Yer welcome, lad," said Gill, reloading her shotgun, and casting him an odd look. "Tha were close."

Horst nodded. Gill aimed again and fired at the door. "I-" Horst started. "I suppose I'd best get myself a weapon, excuse me."

*

Johannes Cabal was making a mental list. His mental list including all the things he'd rather have had happen with this bizarre inn than the attack of the dead that was currently in progress. He paused his mental list to reload his musket and shoot at the monster, blue-fire eyed and clearly ravenous. Zombies, he thought, were a bloody useless waste of time. He started drafting another list. Arsenic, sage, orange peel, salt, consecrated ground, Horst is walking towards you- Johannes rewound. Horst rarely walked anymore.

"I don't trust Gill," said Horst, reaching past Johannes to do a little light throat tearing. Johannes checked his six, the corpse twitched and the flames went out. It had sneaked up on him. He looked back to his brother in subdued but no less genuine gratitude.

"Why's that?" he asked, putting a gun in his brother's gooey outstretched hand. "Other than the obvious."

"She didn't seem overly pleased at my bravery."

"You mean she was wary of-" Johannes broke off to get a headshot "-of a man who walked up to a zombie without fear."

Horst pursed his lips at the term. "You could say that," he said dejectedly before brightening up to add: "but she didn't just seem wary, she seemed annoyed."

Johannes sighed. "What possible reason could a public house landlord-"

"Landlady," Horst corrected.

"-and innkeeper have to destroy their own inn with a hoard of the hungry dead?"

"Braaaaaaaains," answered a corpse, running towards the pair on one full leg and one missing a shin. They both turned to it and raised their guns. 

"After you," Horst allowed and Johannes fired. They ducked to avoid the explosion.

From the bar came a terrible yelling. Mr C Graditute was flinging his arms about trying to stop the damned creature from gnawing through his skull. Unfortunately for Mr Gratitude the damage was already lethally done and he was only still screaming out of sheer biological bloody-mindedness while in a much more literal sense his mind was currently being turned into a bloody mess. The corpse paused in its gnawing to thud Mr Gratitude's head against the corner of the table and hinge the top of his skull straight off. Mr Gratitude was well and truly dead as the creature began to slurp on his brain. Mrs Gratitude had slumped, dazed, onto the table. Horst slapped her alert and pushed a pistol into her hands. 

"If you see one coming at you," he said, in the tones of someone speaking to a particularly dense child, or an alien, both of which Mrs Gratitude, whose name they had learnt when she'd yelled it at her dead husband prior to the semi-swooning, may have been offended by. As it was she took the pistol and aimed it over Horst's shoulder and pulled the trigger. "You shoot it?" she asked sweetly, and Horst grinned.

"That's right." Horst slid across a table to Johannes. "I like Bustles," he said. "She's a surprise." 

Johannes wiped his hair from his forehead, where it had begun to cling. He untied his own cravat and then, tracking Horst's eyes, which were now fixed upon his neck, removed Horst's. 

"If I survive this," Johannes said and Horst's eyes flickered up to meet his. "You can drink. But to survive this I'll need Arsenic, which I have in my bag upstairs, some orange peel-"

"There was a fruit bowl behind the bar," Horst supplied, a little dazedly, eyes back on Johannes' throat.

Horst could hear the blood thrumming in his brother's neck despite all the noise and chaos as the various other customers were fending off attack with whatever they could find. Chairs appeared to be the weapon of choice which was leading to several of the dead shambling around with wooden beams sticking out of their more fleshy parts. About three of the erstwhile living were dead, all of them had jewels or expensive knick knacks still glinting upon their erstwhile persons. 

Johannes tapped Horst's forehead. "Listen to me," he growled. "The poison, the orange peel, some dirt from consecrated land-" They both glanced at the ground where, half under a table and half in the fire, the two parts of the priest were. "We use his hands to bless some water and say some rites," Johannes muttered, "it's not that difficult I've managed before."

"Johannes," Horst began, his face twisted in disgust, "have some respect-"

Taking him by the shoulders Johannes shook him. "Either I have respect for the dead and you are the only one to walk out of here with your brain in the same state it was when you entered this place, or I have no respect and we both walk out with possibly a couple of these lives. I'd say your pick, but I don't intend to die. So," Johannes took a breath, "get me the arsenic, an orange - actually bring the fruit bowl, I'll need a container - and I'll focus on getting some consecrated earth."

Horst pulled Johannes forward and aimed over his shoulder. "Is that all we need?"

Johannes thought for a second. "Salt. And the summoner." He said this last with evident distaste. Horst sighed and said: "You really must stop splitting hairs every time we come across a perfectly valid time to use the word, Johannes."

"Look at them! They're falling apart. It's shoddy third-rate charlatanism and I won't give it the honour of calling it necromancy."

It would be nice to say that either of the brothers Cabal had the presence of mind enough in an attack of the dead to pay much attention to what was happening around them. Unfortunately they had both been relying on sound, and Gill creeping up on them had made extra special effort to make none. Johannes flinched as the warm barrel of a shotgun was shoved under his jaw.

Horst bared his teeth but Gill shook her head. "Ah ah ah," she cooed, without a trace of the accent. "You so much as blur and I'll shoot his pretty little head apart."

Internally both Horst and Johannes began assessing the 'pretty' comment but Horst regained his sense of propriety first and glared. "I think we've found our summoner."

Gill laughed, a cawing over-loud sound that carried across the din of tearing flesh and the occasional gurgle, and walked Johannes backward. She picked her way to the centre of the room and smiled. "What're you then?" she asked Horst, pushing Johannes' head back with the gun to bare his throat. Johannes squirmed.

"Hadn't you banked on corpses turning up to your inn?" Horst's voice was so cold you could power a refrigerator with it. He took stock of the situation, everyone was dead but Mrs Gratitude, but even she was cornered and well on her way to joining her husband. "We seem to be the majority in residence."

"Who're you here to meet?"

Horst nodded to Johannes. "He's the one who knows that I'm afraid, though I'd wager whoever it was has been murdered and robbed by now."

"It isn't murder," Gill said proudly. "It's redistribution of wealth and matter. The brains keep the pets happy and the jewels keep me."

The pets. Horst looked in horror as one of the creatures, missing an arm at the elbow and both of its legs, nuzzled at Gill's feet. Mrs Graditude shouted something about bloody bastards but no one payed her much heed. Johannes began to struggle.

"No, Mr Necromancer-Holier-Than-Thou. I think your brains aren't to be given to pets or blown away. Your brains could be useful." She drew the barrel of the gun down to Johannes' chest. 

Horst took the opportunity and hoped Johannes would forgive him if it failed; he blurred. 

As fast as lightning* Horst Cabal acquired arsenic, salt, and peeled an orange. He placed them on the table nearest to the door and blurred back into sight. Gill hadn't noticed, still muttering sinister nothings to Johannes.

One of her pets tried to take a swipe at Horst's leg but found that Horst had had rather enough of this sort of behaviour when its head was ripped clean from its shoulders and hurled into the fire.

Gill looked back at him. "That wasn't nice," she said. 

"Holen Sie sich auf die Frau, Johannes. Ich werde die Teufelin zu nehmen," Horst said and he flung himself at Johannes and Gill, scratching at Gill's hands around the gun until she surrendered it and let Johannes go. Horst wrapped a hand around her throat. "You really thought I'd let you hurt him," he hissed. "You really thought that you'd scare me when your pathetic pets didn't even come close." He ducked as another one tried to take a chunk out of his head. He raised his voice to Johannes, who had managed to get to Mrs Gratitude with her brain intact. "Wenn ich sie töte, werden die Toten dennoch kommen?"

Johannes had grabbed the fruit bowl and poured in the arsenic. "Das kann später noch unsere Sorge sein, wenn es denn nötig ist."

Gill began to struggle under Horst in earnest, coming to the realisation, as many seem to when confronted with the Cabal brothers, of what exactly 'töten' means. Horst tightened his grip. He smiled at Johannes and nodded his head to the horrified Mrs Gratitude. "Es wird nötig sein, vertrau mir."

Johannes nodded and turned his focus to Mrs Gratitude. "Look away," Horst heard him say, slightly softer than he'd come to ever anticipate from his callous, stick in the mud brother. He lost interest as the thumping of Gill's heart came back into focus.

"Oh Gill," he said. "You might have gotten away with it, too." He smiled and then he bit down.

*

Johannes Cabal brushed caking blood from his hands and held out a cloth to Mrs Gratitude. "I'm," he said. "I'm sorry about your husband."

Mrs Gratitude shrugged the shrug of the shell shocked. "He was a bit of a bastard anyway. He got a letter, you see, dragged me all the way here. Said there was some super secret meeting. Magic and that. He dressed me up like this," she directed this to Horst. 

It was still night but a little too close to dawn for either Johannes' or Horst's comfort. "My brother cannot go about in daylight, Mrs Gratitude-"

"Constance, please."

"Constance," Horst piped up, pushing past the hollowness that had settled in his lungs. "Let us get you home safely."

She flinched at his voice, shying away from the hand he held out to her until, stung, he pulled it back. "Are you dangerous?" she asked.

"Not to you," he replied. She moved to him and, taking him by surprise, she hugged him.

Johannes looked up at the wreckage that made up the ground floor of the inn. "If we get some sleep and wait til next nightfall we should be able to find a town," he suggested.

Horst extricated himself from Constance. "Are you sure we got them all?" He gestured behind Johannes.

Constance pulled a gun out from a bustle on her dress and fired.

"I am now," Johannes said and the smile he smiled was almost human.

 

-THE END-

**Author's Note:**

> 1 or rather infamous  
> 2 again if one works on birthdate as opposed to hours or days lived upon this good green earth, days Horst has not lived for nigh on ten years  
> 3 a lie Cabal has come to find extremely comforting
> 
> HAPPY MERRY!


End file.
